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"Yes."

"And how does it make you feel?"

"Sad and frightened." Eliot sighed, tried a wistful smile, couldn't manage one. "I had hoped it would never have to be proved, that it would never matter one way or another—whether I was sane or not."

"You have some doubts as to your own sanity?"

"Certainly."

"And how long has this been going on?"

Eliot's eyes widened as he sought an honest answer. "Since I was ten, maybe."

"I'm sure you're joking."

"That's a comfort."

"You were a sturdy, sane little boy."

"I was?" Eliot was ingenuously charmed by the little boy he had been, was glad to think about him rather than about the spooks that were closing in on him.

"I'm only sorry we brought you out here."

"I loved it out here. I still do," Eliot confessed dreamily.

The Senator moved his feet slightly apart, making a firmer base for the blow he was about to deliver. "That may be, boy, but it's time to go now—and never come back."

"Never come back?" Eliot echoed marvelingly.

"This part of your life is over. It had to end sometime. I'll thank the Rhode Island vermin for this much: They're forcing you to leave, and to leave right now."

"How can they do that?"

"How do you expect to defend your sanity with a backdrop like this?"

Eliot looked about himself, saw nothing remarkable. "This looks—this looks—peculiar?"

"You know damn well it does."

Eliot shook his head slowly. "You'd be surprised what I don't know, Father."

"There's no institution like this anywhere else in the world. If this were a set on a stage, and the script called for the curtain to go up with no one on stage, when the curtain went up, the audience would be on pins and needles, eager to see the incredible nut who could live this way."

"What if the nut came out and gave sensible explanations for his place being the way it is?"

"He would still be a nut."

Eliot accepted this, or seemed to. He didn't argue with it, allowed that he had better wash up and get dressed for his trip. He rummaged through his desk drawers, found a small paper bag containing purchases he had made the day before, a bar of Dial soap, a bottle of Absorbine, Jr., for his athlete's foot, a bottle of Head and Shoulders shampoo for his dandruff, a bottle of Arrid roll-on deodorant, and a tube of Crest toothpaste.

"I'm glad to see you taking pride in your appearance again, boy."

"Hm?" Eliot was reading the label on the Arrid, which he had never used before. He had never used any underarm deodorant before.

"You get cleaned up, cut down on the booze, clear out of here, open a decent office in Indianapolis or Chicago or New York, and, when the hearing comes up, they'll see you're as sane as anybody."

"Um." Eliot asked his father if he had ever used Arrid.

The Senator was offended. "I shower every morning and night. I presume that takes care of any fulsome effluvium."

"It says here that you might get a rash, and you should stop using it, if you get a rash."

"If it worries you, don't use it. Soap and water are the important things."

"Um."

"That's one of the troubles with this country," said the Senator. "The Madison Avenue people have made us all more alarmed about our own armpits than about Russia, China and Cuba combined."

The conversation, actually a very dangerous one between two highly vulnerable men, had drifted into a small area of peace. They could agree with one another, and not be afraid.

"You know—" said Eliot, "Kilgore Trout once wrote a whole book about a country that was devoted to fighting odors. That was the national purpose. There wasn't any disease, and there wasn't any crime, and there wasn't any war, so they went after odors. "

"If you get in court," said the Senator, "it would be just as well if you didn't mention your enthusiasm for Trout. Your fondness for all that Buck Rogers stuff might make you look immature in the eyes of a lot of people."

The conversation had left the area of peace again. Eliot's voice was edgy as he persisted in telling the story by Trout, which was called Oh Say Can You Smell?

"This